Yesterday, State Senator Dinal Neal presented legislation that would limit large corporations and corporate investors from buying more than 100 homes a year and prevent them from inflating housing costs and pricing working families out of the market. Recent reporting from the Las Vegas Review-Journal found that a New York hedge fund is the largest homeowner in Clark County and is targeting starter homes and low-income communities where they can easily outbid working-class Nevadans and obtain large quantities of properties, essentially blocking hardworking families from home ownership.
Last legislative session, Joe Lombardo vetoed similar bipartisan legislation that would have limited the amount of housing stock large corporations could buy up and nearly two years later has not offered a plan to hold corporate investors accountable and ensure that everyday folks are able to afford a home.
Home prices are already at record highs; the Las Vegas Review-Journal found that during Lombardo’s tenure, the median home sale price in the Las Vegas Valley in Southern Nevada in January reached $485,000, the highest ever recorded. Under Lombardo, Nevada is facing one of the toughest housing crises in the nation with eviction rates in Las Vegas being among the highest in the country and homelessness hitting its highest peak since the Great Recession. In the past year alone there have been over 47,000 evictions in Clark County, up from 30,000 evictions in 2023 when there were an average of 70 eviction cases going through eviction court daily in the county.
Last session, while housing costs continued to grow more expensive, Lombardo vetoed multiple bills that would have lowered the cost of housing across the state and kept more Nevadans in their homes.
###
